Asian Journal of Environment & Ecology, 2456-690X,Vol.: 7, Issue.: 2

Original-research-article

Firewood Utilisation and Its Implication on Trees around Mopipi Village in Boteti Sub-District of Botswana

 

Wanda N. Mphinyane1*, Lawrence K. Akanyang2, Kutlwano Mulale1, Fritz Van Deventer3, Lapologang Magole4, Jeremy S. Perkins1, Reuben J. Sebego1, Julius R. Atlhopheng1 and Raban Chanda1

1Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Science, Private Bag UB 00704, Gaborone, Botswana.

2Botswana College of Agriculture, Private Bag 0027, Gaborone, Botswana.

3Department of Land and Water Management, Wageningen University, Netherlands.

4Okavango Research Institute, Private Bag 285, Maun, Botswana.

General Comment

1. Up to 6th August 2012, all SDI journals followed strict double-blind review policy to ensure neutral evaluation. During this review process identity of both, the authors and reviewers are kept hidden to ensure the unbiased evaluation. More information is available at this link.

 

2. We have migrated to transparent and toughest ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ system (Detailed general information is available at this link). The identity of the authors and reviewers will be revealed to each other during this review process. This transparent process will help to eradicate any possible malicious/purposeful interference by any person (publishing staff, reviewer, editor, author, etc) during peer review. As a result of this unique system, all reviewers will get their due recognition and respect, once their names are published in the papers (Example Link). If reviewers do not want to reveal their identities, we will honour that request. In that case, only the review reports will be published as ‘anonymous reviewer report’.

 

3. Additionally ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ greatly helps in ‘continuity and advancement of science’. We firmly believe that all the files related to peer review of a manuscript are valuable and hold an important place in the continuity and advancement of science. If publishers publish the peer review reports along with published papers, this process can result in savings of thousands of hours of future authors during experiments, manuscript preparation, etc. by minimising the common errors after reading these previously published peer review reports. Therefore, as per our new official policy update, if the manuscript is published, all peer review reports will be available to the readers. All files (like the original manuscript, comments of the reviewers, revised manuscript, and editorial comment (if any)) related to the peer review, will be available in “Review history” link along with the published paper (Example Link).

 

4. Additionally, we believe that one of the main objectives of peer review system is ‘to improve the quality of a candidate manuscript’. Normally we try to publish the ‘average marks (out of 10)’ a manuscript received at initial peer review stage and at final publication stage to record its history of improvement during peer review. This process further increases the transparency. It is more important to record the ‘strength and weakness of a manuscript honestly’ than claiming that 'our peer review system is perfect’. Therefore, these transparent processes (i.e. publication of review history files and scores of a particular manuscript) additionally give a clear idea of the strength and weakness of a published paper to the readers. This process enhances the chances of proper use of the result of research (and or reduces the chances of misuse of the weakness of the findings of the paper). Thus this transparent process may prove to be highly beneficial for the society in the long run.

 

Specific Comment

Average Peer review marks at initial stage: 6.375/10

Average Peer review marks at publication stage: 7.8/10

Peer review history

Stage Description File 1 File 2
Stage 1 Original Manuscript File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_1 (KOKOU Kouami, Togo) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_2 (T.O. Adewuyi, Nigeria) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_3 (Lupala John Zacharia, Tanzania) File 1 File 2
Stage 2 Peer review report_4 (Muboko N, Zimbabwe) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Revised_MS_v1_and_Feedback_v1 File 1 File 2
Stage 2 Re-Review report_1_v1 (KOKOU Kouami, Togo) (Declined) NA NA
Stage 2 Re-Review report_2_v1 (T.O. Adewuyi, Nigeria) (No response) NA NA
Stage 2 Re-Review report_3_v1 (Lupala John Zacharia, Tanzania) (No response) NA NA
Stage 2 Re-Review report_4_v1 (Muboko N, Zimbabwe) (No response) NA NA
Stage 3 Comment_Editor_1_v1 File 1 NA
Stage 3 Comment_Editor_2_v1 File 1 NA